LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Anti-Trump Republican Jeff Timmer, a former state Republican Party executive director, has joined with other moderate Michigan Republicans in a bid to get a new political party on the ballot in 2024. Dissatisfied with the Trump movement and the progressive Democrats, Timmer and a handful of other Republicans have joined forces to bring the “Common Sense” party to Michigan voters.

In order to move forward with their plan, they will have to ask the Board of State canvassers to sign off on their petition on Friday – which, if it goes forward, will need 45,000 valid signatures in order for them to be certified as a third party.

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Timmer told the Detroit Free Press, “We’re concerned about the rise of extremism and political radicalism especially in the Republican Party today. Our goal is to nominate candidates who are committed to democracy, to free and fair elections, to the rule of law and who will speak out against authoritarianism and the lurch toward autocracy that we’re seeing.”

Timmer, who left the party because of Donald Trump, became an adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project in 2020 got help defeat the former president from getting into office. Timmer had said about the Lincoln Project, “It’s a burn-it-down, Molotov cocktail-throwing army” and said it was created to “bruise Trump every day and get him off message.”

Now, Timmer is hoping to use that same mentality to bruise Trump in Michigan and possibly go after other Republican extremists that he doesn’t like. Helping him with his quest are Bob LaBrant, former VP and general counsel at the state Chamber of Commerce; former United States Rep. Dave Trott (R-Birmingham); and former United States Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Battle Creek).

In order to move their Common Sense party ahead, they have to change something called fusion voting which is not allowed in Michigan. It’s where a candidate can be listed as a candidate of more than one party. What would happen is that the Common Sense party would only nominate a candidate who has already been nominated by the Democrats or Republicans in the primaries – so the candidate’s name would appear twice – and all votes would be added up for a total.

In order to have the voters participate in fusion voting, the Common Sense party would have to sue the state on their prohibition on that kind of voting. After they collect the needed signatures, they will bring their lawsuit into the Court of Claims.